I’ve consistently answered that the most important thing to remember is that even though they are world famous, these folks are human beings just like the rest of us and they seem to enjoy working with PR professionals who realize that as well. There’s nothing billionaires seem to dislike more than nervous handlers who act in awe of their celebrity. They want to proceed from one planned scenario to the next with ease and confidence. They want to follow a PR leader, not feel as if they themselves need to guide a follower (especially in unfamiliar territory surrounded by media frenzy, which most places are for such people).

Here’s some b-roll footage of me (age 29) arriving at an event with Bill Gates. I was feeling pretty pumped-up trying hard not to show it, but we somehow got the job done. 

There are a lot of clients out there – especially middle-management – who ‘Lord it over’ the PR people and seem to think that they know everything. Some might assume that billionaires might act that way, writ large. But the reverse is true. You learn very quickly that such people probably became so successful in the first place because they maintained open minds. They also ‘get’ the fact that they wouldn’t be shelling out oodles of money for professional services unless they felt that some value is being added.

For much of their careers, PR professionals work hard to earn engagement with stakeholders such as media in order to generate positive media coverage. Pitching and placing coverage is often an uphill struggle, with calls to journalists that often go unreturned and rejection a constant fact of life. Just getting the coverage – any coverage – is often the objective, with concern for the content a secondary priority amid the general relief that the story appeared somewhere.

All of this changes when the PR pro becomes the designated media contact for a famous person. Then the underlying fear isn’t that coverage won’t appear, it’s that the wrong kind will. With saturation media play already a given, then then strategy and messaging become key. For example, when Bill Gates was in Toronto during 1993, Canada was just coming out of a tough recession and with the advent of new PC technologies, people started to worry that technology would put them out of a job. Thus was born the slogan “Putting technology to work for Canadians,” to communicate Microsoft’s vision that new new technology would enable, not unemploy.

There are more media requests than there is billionaire time in town to accommodate them, and so it is the media who then need to deal with rejection as outlets and opportunities are carefully selected. On one level, it felt strangely exhilarating to decide who would get to interview Donald Trump in Toronto or George Soros in Seoul, but rather than mete out to others the rudeness I had endured from a small minority of journos in past, I took great pains when I was in such a position of unexpected authority to return all calls and express sincere appreciation for the media interest.

This video shows the publicity results of the Trump experience:

I once heard that any good PR person should always keep out of the picture, but with so many media around, and being the handler, that is basically impossible.

A lot of outsiders to Asia think that because Korea and Japan have a lot of things in common, then you can follow pretty much the same cookie-cutter approach in both countries.

Well, that may be true sometimes, but more often than not distinct approaches need to be pursued to achieve ’societal alignment.’ For example, in Korea digital technology has rendered the press club system obsolete, whereas in Japan it still reigns supreme as an information cartel. Korean PR is more visual and vivid, but in Japan the use of text unaccompanied by images is commonplace in PR and while it’s OK in Seoul to send large e-mail attachments, in Tokyo that was often found rude.

Koreans are in a hurry to get ambitious things done, so speed is their thing and it doesn’t matter sometimes if the journey is a bit harried as long as the destination is reached. The Japanese, I find, are more inclined to take the time to ensure that every last detail of quality is mastered. Far better to take longer creating something of the highest quality than to rush things and be sloppy.

That was the key for me, aiming to create a premium brand for Edelman in a country that values quality, and to ask staff to be the best they can be in the spirit of Japan’s kaizen business philosophy. Still, while I did try to tap into this vein of national sentiment, we were actually able to grow so fast by acting completely different than all of the other PR firms. In Japan, where it’s important to ‘fit in’ and be like the others, we decided early on to aggressively differentiate ourselves by being completely different than the other firms in a range of areas.

This involved:

• positioning the firm as aiming at a new PR standard of excellence competing on quality rather than price (in a country where there are a lot of frustrated and patient clients suffering one mediocre ‘commodity’ firm after another who crave a PR firm that can think, fearlessly advise and execute rather than just ‘follow instructions’)
• ensuring the prominent role of Japan in the global Edelman network and showcasing Japanese accomplishments internationally (in a global industry where Japan really does seem to ‘punch below its weight’ and many practitioners working at firms in Tokyo regard English interactions with overseas people as a necessary inconvenience, thus making the overseas colleagues wonder about their Japanese co-workers’ commitment)
• relentlessly promoting Edelman Japan’s accomplishments in the PR industry (in a country where modesty can reduce the motivation and effectiveness of overseas marketing, but in a network where shameless self-promotion is a sign of PR virility)
• massively educating the staff with accelerated learning programs so as to increase the value of our primary product — the employees’ time — and thus help keep the premium quality promise with stakeholders

Just about every person I spoke with forecast the doom and defeat of a new Edelman Japan created along these lines, and some days when it was me living out of my suitcase after one discouraging meeting after another, I wondered if a unilingual Canadian expat could get the new firm off the ground. I later discovered that compared to optimistic Americans, Japanese can seem pessimistic and seek a greater degree of tangibility before corporate boasts are taken seriously.

Before I set up shop in Tokyo, Dan Edelman — who like his son Richard was a strong supporter of the new Japanese organization — sent me all of his files which chronicled Edelman’s dealings with Japan since the early 1980s. They arrived one day in large binders labeled with well known Japanese PR names like Dentsu, Kyodo, Hakuhodo, and Ozma. When I flipped through the hundreds of pages of material, I was stunned to see with my own eyes the extent of cultural misunderstanding (on both sides) which must have played a role in stymieing the success of the earlier failed attempts to win allies, forge affiliations, or precipitate acquisitions.

I guess we were able to make a success of Edelman’s Japan entry because — financed by the confidence of early foundation clients like Microsoft and Nissan — we just built the place one person at a time, sharing the entrepreneurial thrill of co-creating a company with a very courageous group of Japanese colleagues who wanted to make a career in modern public relations.

In reward for my efforts, I was given a whopping big office complete with a sofa, coffee table and credenza. I couldn’t conceive of working anywhere else and I found my salary of $78,000 Canadian dollars perfectly fine at the time.

So when Bruce MacLellan — more senior to me at the firm and my first PR mentor — approached me to co-found a new firm that summer (in partnership with fellow H&K alumnus Elizabeth Hoyle and Michael Adams of Environics Research fame), my initial reaction was reluctance. He was talking about things like entrepreneurship and freedom and equity…concepts which had yet to crystallize in the mind of this then-29 year old.

I first met Bruce in 1979 through youth politics in Canada, and I regarded him then — as I continue to today — as an exemplar of excellence in communications and as one of the most creative idea-driven thought leaders in the business. It didn’t take long for him to rally me to the cause of raising a new PR standard, one which we hoped would stand staunchly for consulting quality and building clients’ businesses through what we called ‘breakthrough communications solutions.’

After an anxious first few weeks waiting for the phone to ring, the new Environics Communications rose quickly in its first year of life. Our largest initial revenue source was the satellite television sector, then poised for explosive growth. One of those clients — the now-defunct AlphaStar Digital Television — was entering the U.S. DBS TV market. Our client wanted us to help them find a new American agency partner. When we asked them for their budget, they indicated that it would be $500,000 per year, which in those days was a considerable retainer.

Then it was Bruce’s idea to ask the client if Environics — by any measure a leader in satellite PR — could establish a new operation in the U.S. custom-designed around their more than ample level of foundation business. As the account leader, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but they were a courageous and fearless lot and responded positively when we proposed the concept, a key element of which involved my moving to their New York-area headquarters in Connecticut and becoming their PR leader in America (while establishing the Environics office nearby in Stamford).

Thus the first Canadian owned PR firm in the United States market was born. Here’s a video showing some of the first publicity we helped secure for our original client:

It was one of the great highlights of my career to lead the firm’s American market entry, build its business from the ground up, and run its progressively prosperous operations. Here’s an article from Canada’s Marketing magazine that ran at the time:

Today Environics continues its winning ways as a strong North American PR agency and I am fortunate to have so many fine friends working at the old firm.

Now, most people are somewhat leery about public speaking, many are downright afraid of doing an interview with a journalist. Me, I simply enjoy the thrill of it all. Any normal person is going to feel nervous to some extent in front of an audience (or a reporter with an audience), but how awful if we let this small little organ called the adrenaline gland come between us and the successful achievement of our purposes. For me, I try and channel the adrenaline so it fuels my performance in front of a microphone or on a stage.

Since the early 1990s, I found that I could apply the lessons I‘ve learned through my own experiences to the training of several hundred executives in North America (United States and Canada) and North Asia (Japan and Korea) in:

• conducting effective media interviews
• crisis communications preparation and response
• presentation and speech delivery

Probably one of the hardest sessions I ever did was in June 2008, with professional racing drivers on a Nissan team. It was hard because normally I was accustomed to coaching fancy business executives, but these were ‘regular guys’ and I had to completely change the tonality and the manner of the session.

It goes to show that the trainer needs to keep getting trained to stay sharp, as I did here a few years ago before a TV interview in Korea: